McLaren F1 Chief Confident Honda Can Improve Engines

It was big news when Honda announced it would be returning Formula One for the 2015 season in a partnership with McLaren, but so far, the results have been pretty disappointing. Honda's engines have been both underpowered and unreliable.

In fact, it's been so bad that their own driver, Fernando Alonso, has been quoted saying the team should consider this season a loss so it can focus on doing better next year.

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"I don't have any problem starting every single race from the pit lane if we keep improving the car. That's the main priority now, to concentrate on next year's performance, so let's see what the team can offer," he said.

After a recent series of meetings between McLaren and Honda in Tokyo, though, McLaren chief Ron Dennis appears to believe they've worked out a solution. Honda obviously won't be able to make the improvements immediately, but it the team has been working hard to improve the power unit's performance.

"In the end, this very acute pain that we have inflicted to a certain degree on ourselves is the fastest way to get back to where we need to get to," said Dennis.

Apparently, the reliability issues they've had have been the result of pushing so hard to make the power output competitive.

"You develop the engines as much as you want, said Dennis. "There is total freedom away from the circuit and with the number of engines used. It is only when you have significant improvement do you introduce an engine with a change of tokens. Theoretically, in an ideal world, that should be every fourth races, but we've tried to move forward faster and that has affected reliability and made the whole thing challenging."

Whether Honda can get to the point before the start of next season where its engines are both powerful enough to be competitive and reliable enough to finish a race remains to be seen. If not, Sad Alonso will probably be making a lot more appearances at post-race press conferences.

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